Iain Duncan Smith is three times more likely to hit mental health sufferers with benefit sanctions than he is to help them into work, a damning report reveals.

An analysis by the charity Mind found almost 20,000 people with mental health issues had their benefits docked last year.

Yet only 6,340 mental health sufferers were helped to find work during the same period.

The figures came as the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) announced it will be investigating the Government’s benefit cuts.

The probe will look at whether the reforms have had a disproportional impact on single parents, children and the disabled and whether the tax credit cuts will leave people without an adequate standard of living.

The Committee will also investigate what steps are being done to cut the number using food banks and whether mental health services are adequate in the light of the cuts.

Suffering: The reforms are making life harder for people with mental illness, says Mind (Image: PA)

The research by Mind, obtained by a Freedom of Information request, will pile pressure on Mr Duncan Smith to halt his cruel sanctions regime that sees those on benefits lose money if they are a few minutes late signing on or fail to look for work.

According to Mind there are 250,000 people with mental health issues who receive the Employment and Support Allowance. Of these, 19,259 were sanctioned last year.

Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, said: “It is perverse that people with mental health problems are more likely to have their benefits stopped than they are to be supported into employment.

“We have long been warning the Government that a punitive approach towards people who are out of work because of their health or disability is not only ineffective but is causing a great deal of distress.”

Meanwhile, Mr Duncan Smith announced yesterday that job advisers are to be stationed in food banks.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said people seeking emergency food parcels would be given help on how to find work.

The scheme is being trialled at a food bank in Manchester but could be introduced into other centres if it is successful, he said.

“I am trialling at the moment a job adviser situating themselves in the food bank for the time that the food bank is open and we are already getting very strong feedback about that,” he told the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

“If this works and if the other food banks are willing to encompass this and we think it works we think we would like to roll this out across the whole of the UK.”

The Child Action Poverty Group said it already had advisers in food banks “dealing with misery caused by the Department for Work and Pensions.”

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith said: “The revelation that the government is considering placing DWP staff in food banks across the country, highlights the grim reality that people depending on emergency food aid is increasingly a central part of Iain Duncan Smith’s vision for our social security system.

“Under the Tories food bank use has risen exponentially, leaving more than a million people depending on emergency food.

“This is in no small part due to the Secretary of State’s incompetent and callous running of the DWP. The fact that Iain Duncan Smith is so relaxed about extreme food poverty that he has allowed it to become an accepted element of the national planning for the DWP is deeply worrying.”